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First to Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" This old adage has just caught up with Bibi after he conducted a highly successful diplomatic feat in blocking Iran's plans to establish a military base for threatening Israel from Syria. Netanyahu has gained the backing of both Presidents Trump and Putin. It comes as no surprise that Trump is in Israel's corner, but Putin is a different matter. However, at their recent meeting, the Russian leader told Bibi that he has no objection to Israeli airstrikes on the Iranian military buildup in Syria. Moreover, the Russian ambassador to Israel has reportedly said that Moscow cannot prevent Israel from attacking the Iranians, but on the other hand, neither can it dictate Iran's withdrawal from Syria.

Although Netanyahu has still not found a fail-safe tactic for halting Hamas firebombing from Gaza, this does not pose an existential threat to the Jewish state. However, Iranian forces closing in on the Syrian front is something that Israel will not tolerate. So Bibi was riding high in opinion polls, and if a snap election were called he would likely return as new Prime Minister, despite police investigations on four financial cases.

First the facts: Poland itself was invaded by Nazi Germany at the outset of WWII. At the same time, there are reams of documented evidence, including photographs, proving that many Poles participated in pogroms and reporting Jews to the Nazis. Granted, there was a smaller number of some 6,000 Polish citizens who risked their lives in saving Jews and who have been rightly honored by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. The bitter controversy flared last February when the Polish Parliament passed a law that imposed a three-year prison sentence on anyone who contended that the Poles had collaborated with the Nazi regime. There was immediate outrage in Israel and among many historians who had researched the Holocaust. The clash even threatened to sabotage relations between Jerusalem and Warsaw.

Gone are the days when Time magazine crowned Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu 'King of Israel! Today Bibi has to share his top job with Education Minister Naftali Bennett who has just taught Netanyahu a painful lesson. It focused on a key Knesset vote to circumvent a Supreme Court ruling that ordered an Israeli evacuation of some forty Israeli homes that were built illegally on private Arab-owned land at the Jewish settlement of Amona on the West Bank. The pro-settlement camp went on the warpath, with Bennett leading the charge.

Israel is still reeling after Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu appointed Avigdor Lieberman as his new Defense Minister. Half of the country thinks Bibi has lost his marbles while the other believes Lieberman is just what the doctor ordered to cope with the violence and bloodshed running rampant in the Middle East. In the past, Lieberman has called for imposing the death penalty on Palestinian terrorists, who have been killing Israeli civilians in the streets, and suggested that Israel should topple the Hamas regime in Gaza and target Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for backing terrorism against the Jewish State. In addition, if Cairo ever threatened Israel again, Jerusalem should destroy the huge Aswan Dam in Egypt.

Israel's Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has just made the biggest mistake of his political career. He has forced the resignation of the popular Defense Minister Moshe 'Bogie' Ya'alon, who has also resigned from the Knesset and threatens to challenge Netanyahu for 'the national leadership' in the future. This is nothing less than one of the biggest political bombshells in Israel's history.

It's no holds barred, almost. In the current clash between the Obama Administration and Israel, both sides are pulling out all the stops. Secretary John Kerry has now warned that if the U.S. Senate blocks the deal it will trigger a devaluation of the U.S. dollar. Washington will hold her to account. Bear in mind that a majority of U.S. Senators also believe the Iranians have 'fleeced' Kerry and President Barack Obama.

Granted, this will allow you to exit the White House in January of 2017 with your Nobel Prize intact, but what of the longer term impact on your successors? Last but not least, what about Israel and the Sunni Arab states which are in Iran's nuclear crosshairs but which were totally excluded by the Great Powers in the crucial talks? Meanwhile the Iranians are not even helping you sell the nuclear package that is so full of holes.

Seventy years after the Holocaust, the issue of America's response to it, and whether more Jews could have been saved, still arouses passions. At a July 17 academic conference at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem featuring the institution's leading historians alongside scholars from the U.S.-based David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, they locked horns over the question.

Is Israel's Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu getting the message? His interview with the Bloomberg News may indicate that Netanyahu realizes that he has lost the 'blame game' in the wake of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's failed peace mission. Not only Kerry and diplomat Martin Indyk pointed the finger at Bibi, but also President Barack Obama. Even Bibi's own negotiator, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, has blasted Housing Minister Uri Ariel for torpedoing the talks by announcing plans for new settlement building. At the time, the PM could have stepped in but chose not to do so in order not to rile the Right-wingers in his coalition. Israel finds itself in the diplomatic doghouse, although Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas did nothing to advance Kerry's peace mission and has even teamed up with terrorist Hamas.

Israeli leaders are now going back to the drawing board for drafting a new policy for prisoner exchanges. In a media blitz to the Israeli public, Defense Minister Ehud Barak has indicated the government will not carry out another lopsided prisoner swap - 1027 Palestinian terrorists for one kidnapped IDF soldier. After remaining silent during the recent public debate, Opposition leader Tzipi Livni of the Kadima party has now condemned the exchange as a blow to Israel that has strengthened Hamas and weakened the more moderate West Bank President Mahmoud Abbas.

By enriching uranium from 3% to 20%, Iran appears to have startled most of the international community into finally believing that her ultimate goal is to acquire nuclear weapons. However China, which can cast a veto in the UN Security Council against stiffer sanctions, is still holding out. Amid the mounting tension, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will be flying to Moscow to discuss the situation with Russian leaders, while U.S. Admiral Mike Mullen flies to Israel. Meanwhile Brig.Gen.(res.) Uzi Eilam, a former top Israeli nuclear official, has contended that although Iran's move was dramatic, the Iranians apparently still do not have the required capability to build an atomic bomb.

The U.S. announcement of a $6 billion arms sale to Taiwan could not have come at a worse time for President Barack Obama's attempt to rally UN Security Council backing for new sanctions against Iran. A former senior Israeli official in Washington says chances are now slimmer than ever of getting China's crucial support. Meanwhile, the U.S. is beefing up the missile defenses of four Gulf states as Iran launches a missile which could potentially reach America's eastern seaboard. Analyst David Essing assesses this and other developments over the past seven days.

Israeli settlers in Judea & Samaria (West Bank) are defying the Israeli government's ten month housing freeze. In several incidents, the residents have prevented housing inspectors from entering their communities to serve the building freeze orders. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has tried to allay the settlers' fury by stressing that Israeli construction will be resumed after the ten month 'suspension' and that 3,000 current housing units will be completed. IsraCast assessment: Israel is now bracing for a showdown between settlers and their former champion, right-wing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. In other developments this week, are there new manifestations of the 'clash of civilizations' in Europe and even in the Middle East?

Should Israel go it alone, if its intelligence community discovers that Iran is about to produce a nuclear weapon? What is Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu likely to tell U.S. President Barack when they meet in the White House later this month to discuss Iran and the Palestinians? In an exclusive interview with IsraCast, Moshe Arens a former Israeli defense minister and foreign minister as well as ambassador to Washington, discussed these crucial issues as the U.S. leader prepares to engage Iran in a nuclear dialogue while 'urging 'progress on the ground' along the Palestinian track.

Eight days after the IDF launched major air strikes, Hamas continued its relentless rocketing of Israeli towns and villages from Gaza. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak both declared there was no alternative but to send in IDF troops and tanks to silence the shelling of Israeli civilians once and for all. Moshe Arens, a former Israeli Defense Minister and Foreign Minister and a Likud party member, assessed the evolving situation for IsraCast concluding this is a campaign that Israel can and must win.

Moshe Arens, a former Israeli Defense and Foreign Minister, accuses the Israeli government of making Sderot civilians pay the price for the political process with the Palestinians. Arens was interviewed by IsraCast after IDF figures revealed that Palestinians fired some 3,500 Qassam rockets and mortars from Gaza, mainly at Sderot, since the total Israeli withdrawal in the summer of 2005. Moreover, since the Hamas takeover of Gaza last June, some 1,700 mortars and rockets have been fired at Sderot. Asked to comment on the recent American National Intelligence Estimate that Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003 Arens said intelligence assessments are often wrong and Israel must act in its own best interest.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has toured the Middle East meeting with Arab and Israeli leaders in the run-up to the regional conference this fall. All signs are go that most Arab states, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert are firmly behind the current American initiative to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The latest flurry of diplomatic activity comes against the background of U.S. efforts to block Iran's drive for nuclear weapons which also worries the Sunni Arab regimes as well as a future American exit strategy from Iraq. However Moshe Arens, a former Israeli defense and foreign minister told IsraCast that the regional conference and the big U.S. arms sales to the Arab states are a big gamble for Israel and could pose some new threats.

Is Israel planning to evacuate the Negev town of Sderot which is located just across the border from the Gaza Strip? Defense Minister Amir Peretz categorically denied rumors that this is in the offing in light of the repeated Palestinian rocketing of the town. Meanwhile, a former defense minister, Moshe Arens says Israel will have no choice but to launch a major ground operation into Gaza to suppress the rocketing.